Best Lenses For Fashion Photography

Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items. Fashion photography is most often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Allure.

This summer I got excited to shoot large format film for the first time. I have liked the results that I have gotten with pinhole photography in medium format using a Zero Image 612F camera. A flickr friend, integrity_of_light, inspired me to move up to large format. I love a lot of his work. But I had to upgrade my scanner in the process so that I could reasonably scan a negative that large and just as importantly I had to figure out the logistics of developing sheet film. After quite a lot of research I decided to develop my sheet film using BTZS 4x5 film tubes. It seemed to be well thought out and less error prone then some of the alternatives. The only down side is that I had to give up on using Rodinal as a developer because only 2 oz of developer is used in each tube. And there is a minimum required amount of Agfa Rordinal.

Yesterday when the day finally came, I quickly found out that loading sheet film is not entirely intuitive. I took one sheet out into the daylight just to see which side had the emulsion in relation to the notch in the sheet of film. For the curious, when you are holding the sheet film such that the notch is in the top right hand corner, the emulsion is facing you. Unlike roll film, you can load it backwards! It will take a bit of practice before I feel entirely comfortable loading sheet film into the holders. It took more time than I expected to get it right. The first time I tried I misloaded the film. I didn't find this out until after the first exposure. After taking the picture, the dark slide pushed the film out of the holder! I learned from that mistake and got it right the second time.

The image that you see is really not all that great. It was just a test to see if I could get the whole process down from start to finish. And in that regard I succeeded. I look forward to making a few more attempts in the coming weeks.

A couple of years ago I became interested in pinhole photography. It started with the realization that I could further explore black and white photography cheaply with the purchase of the Holga 120WPC--a plastic medium format pinhole camera. Later I would continue that exploration with the purchase of the Zero Image 612F and Zero Image 45 pinhole cameras. The small sticking point with a pinhole camera is getting the exposure right. This will usually require the use of a handheld light meter. Cameras with lenses will typically have apertures in the f/1.4 to f/32 range. And it no surprise that my Gossen Luna Pro light meter is capable of calculating shutter speeds with an aperture range of f/0.7 to f/128. The problem lies in finding the shutter speed outside of this range.

The Holga 120WPC pinhole camera has a stated fixed aperture of f/133. My large format Zero Image 45 pinhole camera has a f/138 aperture for 20mm. And my Zero Image 612F pinhole camera has a f/158 aperture. In the past, for all of these cameras I light metered at f/128 and multiplied by 1.25 for the small number f-stops and 1.5 for the larger number f-stop. The reasoning for this had to do with what I estimated the next f-stop to be from f/128 and where the given pinhole f/stop was in relation to f/128 and the next f/stop.

Even though I got perfectly acceptable exposures with my estimations, it always bothered me a little that I was unable to precisely calculate the exposure time. This changed last night when I stumbled across how the f-stop numbers are calculated. They are simply a geometric series of numbers based on taking the square root of two raised to some power with whole numbers. Thus the sqrt 2 ^ 4 = 4 and the sqrt 2 ^ 5 = 5.6. I already knew that with an increase in each f-stop, the shutter speed is doubled. Thus if you have a good exposure at 1/30th second with an f-stop of 4, you will have a good exposure at 1/15th second with an f-stop of 5.6. With these two pieces of information I set out on creating a formula to take any random shutter speed and f-stop and find the shutter speed at any other random f-stop. It took about an hour and re-deriving a couple of basic algebraic rules that I had forgotten. But I succeeded!

T-of-x is the shutter time that was measuredf-stop-of-x is the f-stop that was used during the measurement

T-of-y is the shutter time we are trying to findf-stop-of-y is the f-stop we are going to use

As an example, lets say that I take an indoor incident light meter reading at f/128 and it reads that the exposure should be 3 minutes. If I am going to use my large format Zero Image 45 camera at 20mm, what would be the right exposure? Recall that it has a fixed f-stop of f/138 at a focal length of 20mm.

T-of-x = 3minf-stop-of-x = 128

T-of-y

Entry No. 4 : Appreciation

It's been about 3 years since I first got my Nikon D40, and I've used it quite a bit since then. I feel that I've come a long way since i started and I've discovered a lot of new things through experience, but the one thing I've lost and gained over time is (not weight) enthusiasm. There have been times when I just don't feel like taking the camera out; on a hot day, or when I'm just too bored or uninspired. I find the best thing to do at these times is browse flickr for cool things and watch some vids. Or pester your dad/mum until they take you on a magical mystery tour to find cool things to photograph.

I started off with an old Olympus prosumer camera (if you could even call it that). It had a decent zoom range, but the LCD was broken after excessive use. It used to be my dad's, and I was happy I finally had a camera of my own. I used it for quite some time, and it was with this camera that I learnt how to control shutter speeds and aperture values as well as ISOs. After a while, I started to steal my dad's prosumer Olympus because I wanted images with slightly better quality. I think this pushed him to the breaking point, until he eventually got me my D40 kit and a 55-200mm lens. I was ecstatic for a while, before the little annoyances with the camera started to get to me.

First was no live view, something which doesn't really make a difference to me considering I almost always look through the viewfinder. The problem starts when you use a tripod and have to look through the viewfinder when it's low or high, or even taking low angle shots.

The second was not having an internal focus motor. This really saddened me, since I couldn't buy cheaper older lenses without being forced to manually focus. I got over this eventually when I realised it wasn't all that hard.

The third was having a low number of megapixels to play with. I know people say that megapixels shouldn't matter, and they're right. But I realised that once you looked at the picture on a computer screen, it wasn't all that big. More importantly, if you don't have enough range with your lenses, cropping will kill your quality.

All of these things nagged at me for a bit... so I cried a river, built a bridge and got over it (lol jk, big girls don't cry). I got used to it and worked around it, and I'm shooting with a 50mm lens now that has no autofocus, but I love it all the same.

Anyway, that's the story of my photography experience thus far. I've attended more events than I can remember and helped my dad photograph more cars than I can remember too. I'm still learning.

I'm considering upgrading to a newer model some time, maybe a D5000 or a D90. I'm hoping the D90 price drops more by next year so it'll be a bit cheaper to buy. I'm also going to buy a 35mm f/1.8 lens for christmas, most likely. Very nice lens to use. I don't really bother with studio gear, since I have no patience for it and the situations I'm in rarely call for slow, elaborate setups. =)

On to my next rant. In more recent times, camera companies have been coming out with newer, cheaper entry level dSLRs. While this may not seem like such an issue, it's quickly becoming a case of people having too much money and not enough talent or persistence. Having a dSLR is becoming a trend, a fashion statement, and those who buy dSLRs rarely take the time to learn how to fully utilise their cameras. You see them roaming around, taking pictures they deem to be professional but in reality are pretty mediocre. I'm not saying that it's wrong to buy a dSLR if you're starting off, but the least you could do is learn how to use it well. And then there's the case of buying tonnes of gear but still not understanding the use of each piece. I've seen a lot of people who buy speedlights simply because they think it's more powerful. Some don't even know it can swivel and tilt.

If you're not going to fully utilise your dSLR, you're better off sticking to a point and shoot or a prosumer camera. There are people out there with plenty of talent and no access to proper tools that will help them maximise their ability. I still stand by the fact that you shouldn't buy a DSLR until you feel that the prosumer/compact camera you have is limiting your ability.

Anyway, just want to thank my parents for helping me move forward and sponsoring me for all my gear. I still help work the costs off, so don't be hating just yet. =)

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Remote Shutter Release:This is a wise investment if you often take digital photographs with a camera mounted to a tripod. By remotely causing a digital camera to take a long exposure, you all but eliminate any chance of "camera shake" due to pressing the digital camera's built-in shutter button. This may be especially useful for nighttime, fireworks, cityscape or panorama photography.